I am a senior editor at Forbes, covering legal affairs, corporate finance, macroeconomics and the occasional sailing story. I was the Southwest Bureau manager for Forbes in Houston from 1999 to 2003, when I returned home to Connecticut for a Knight fellowship at Yale Law School. Before that I worked for Bloomberg Business News in Houston and the late, great Dallas Times Herald and Houston Post. While I am a Chartered Financial Analyst and have a year of law school under my belt, most of what I know about financial journalism, I learned in Texas.

The Most Outrageous Executive Perks

Proxy season each year is when public companies are forced to disclose just how much they pay their top executives. But the really fun reading is in the column titled “other compensation.” That’s where companies must explain, in sometimes embarrassing detail, how much other stuff they showered on their executives, from jaunts on the corporate jet to company-paid housing in Bermuda to charitable contributions that just might smooth somebody’s way into high society.

And then there’s the Executive Dude Ranch. Fidelity National Financial is in one of the world’s most boring businesses – title insurance – but its executives found time to kick up their heels to the tune of $453,382 last year at the Rock Creek Cattle Co., a 28,000-acre “working Montana ranch” that just happens to be owned by Fidelity’s chairman, William P. Foley II.

The choice was natural: Foley grew up in the Texas Panhandle and probably draws comfort from the aw-shucks environment of his cattle ranch, where the website says “most introductions still start with a slight tip of the hat and a firm handshake.” Fidelity also spent $55,000 at wineries and restaurants and a hotel owned by Foley, who earned $12.5 million last year.

Most of the following outrageous perks were ferreted out by Michelle Leder and the team at Footnoted.com, a Morningstar unit that scans Securities and Exchange Commission filings for the details investors might otherwise miss.

Footnoted anointed billionaire Barry Diller the King of the Corporate Jet after the chairman of Expedia and IAC/InterActiveCorp racked up $1.28 million worth of personal use of the jet jointly owned by the two companies – on top of $243,000 worth of travel for which he reimbursed the company. Blame company policy, IAC explains: Diller is required to use the jet for security reasons. It also “permits him to travel non-stop and without delay,” and “change his plans quickly in the event Company business requires.”

The runners-up have to be Melvin and Ellen Gordon, the husband-and-wife team who run Tootsie-Roll Industries. Tootsie-Roll spent $1.2 million last year flying Melvin, 92, and Ellen, 80, from their home in an unspecified location to headquarters in Chicago, where the company also leases them an apartment for $120,000 a year. Embattled Chesapeake Energy Chief Aubrey McClendon would have been a contender, but he reimbursed the company $650,000 of his $1.1 million airfare bill “after consultation between Mr. McClendon and the Compensation Committee.”

The company car is a perk that extends well down into the organization chart, but some top executives have apparently turned it into an art form. S.L. Green Realty in New York spent $51,882 on a personal car for Chairman Stephen Green — plus another $119,050 for a chauffeur. Footnoted figures that works out to $468 a day, or enough to drive 233 miles a day, 365 days a year in a New York City cab. Runner-up was CA Inc., which disclosed spending $113,057 on “personal automobile use” for CEO William McCracken.

Expensive security services are a necessary evil for high-profile CEOs, but the disparity between companies in this area is startling. Las Vegas Sands spent $2.6 million on security for Chairman Sheldon Adelson and his family, while Amazon spent $1.6 million protecting Jeff Bezos. Goldman Sachs, in contrast, spent $258,701 on security for Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein.

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Shouldn’t we all strive to be on top so we can get benefits like this? It takes a lot to reach that point. Why are we condemning the results of capitalistic behavior that got our great nation to the point it is at today? Should executives work for peanuts out of the goodness of their hearts? Are we forgetting human nature?

I was searching the internet to find out the name of the president and chairman of Fidelity National Title Insurance Company so that I could address a letter to him concerning the handling of a claim with that company that was filed on my behalf by an employee of Fidelity. I found this article very pertinent. It is interesting to find out where my insurance premiums have gone. My story is on my blog: www.fidelitynationaltitleinsurancecoclaim.blogspot.com.